The Many Confusions Of The Internet Is Not The Answer, By Andrew Keen

from the what's-the-question-again? dept

Any book with a title like The Internet Is Not the Answer leads one to wonder what the question is, and whether there's a "right" answer to it.

The book's author -- Internet entrepreneur, talk show host, and social critic Andrew Keen – is a little dodgy on these details. What he gives us is a tour of the Internet Age's problems – the loss of jobs, privacy, and copyright residuals. The central question at which he seems to be driving is how to build a digital economy that does not result in ruined lives and radical disparities in wealth and power, but the precise question in Mr. Keen's book remains elusive.

So does the answer. The book does have a concluding chapter called "The Answer," and it is apparently "all of the above": more government oversight; "voluntary, market-led solutions"; and an effort to get Internet slackers to accept a new "Bill of Responsibilities that establishes a social contract for every member of networked society." Keen does not, however, develop the specifics of such regulation, solutions, or contract, or of a communitarian ethic which would inform them. More critically, he seems little interested in positive solutions for information equity.

Keen is feted on the book jacket as "the Christopher Hitchens of the Internet" (complete with British accent and rhetorical swagger), but what he's selling is more entertainment than critical analysis. His book is chockablock with amusing and sometimes telling anecdotes about the quirks and excesses of the new digital mandarins – Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, et al. – but provides little specificity about the problem as Keen himself frames it: "As we all step into this brave new digital world, our challenge is to shape our networking tools before they shape us."

The book is short – 226 pages, essentially a compilation of dystopian Internet commentary over the last several years, with some original reporting – and skips entirely the major skirmishes in this space. The seminal network neutrality battle now coming to a head in Washington D.C. goes entirely undiscussed. He complains about how the Internet has become "monetized," but fails to address the primary drivers of that, including for example Comcast's extraction (extortion?) of extra fees to carry those Netflix programs requested by Comcast broadband subscribers. And while Keen devotes a chapter to online piracy and copyright, he omits any reference to Congress' recent addition of 20 years onto the copyright term, making information harder to find and more expensive to access, whether on the web or elsewhere. Aside from snarky references to Wikipedia as the province of white males with some sort of social adjustment disorder, there is scant attention paid to other attempts to carve non-monetized spaces out of the Internet's bounty.

Keen is at his best when he essays something akin to objective reporting. His chapter on the intellectual predecessors and development of the Internet is a quite useful addition to the literature. His chapter on privacy ("Chrystal Man") is also worthwhile, outlining the dark side of information utopia, how governments and corporations vacuum up and aggregate data on individuals, with obligatory stops along the way at Edward Snowden's NSA revelations and Facebook's emotion- manipulation experiments. He quotes reports about data broker Acxiom, for instance, which has "profiles of 75% of all Americans, each around five thousand data points that can be constructed and deconstructed" for both marketing and government surveillance purposes. What he does not do is indicate the sources of this data – the key question posed by recent Senate, FTC, and GAO reports – the phone and cable operators, credit card companies, and government agencies that feed information into these huge databases.

At times, Keen is stunningly naïve. "Elected governments exist so that we can shape the society in which we live," he writes, "There's no other alternative [sic] to controlling technological change." Yes, Congress should get right on it, and elected officials should lead. The only problem is that Congress is controlled by what Susan Crawford rightly calls a "mosh pit" of special interests. The 1996 Telecom Act took years to write, back when Congress still half-functioned, and the telco and cable corporations filed suit against the Act's regulations before the ink was dry on the Federal Register.

At no point does Keen give the reader a handle on the real-world issues along the divide between open access information and architecture on the one hand, and a "top down system that is concentrating wealth rather than spreading it" on the other. What Keen offers is a critique of the Silicon Valley's reigning libertarian ethic which is entertaining at times, but ultimately as facile and shallow as that ethic itself.

Chris Witteman is a telecommunications attorney in San Francisco.

Filed Under: andrew keen, internet, net neutrality, piracy, regulation

Don't Read Andrew Keen's Book - You'll Harm His Identity

from the or-'zuck-it-up'-if-you-prefer dept

To promote his new pop-Luddite book Digital Vertigo—named, I assume, for the slight feeling of dizziness that signals the onset of old age—Andrew Keen has written an opinion column for CNN about the disastrous consequences of social media for the human condition. Having spent a day to process his words, I'm left with one inescapable conclusion: Keen needs to take a broader view of history. I call this "inescapable" because it holds true whether or not you agree with him. If you reject his premise that them kids aint right, then you probably think he needs to look at all the many technological and societal revolutions throughout the millennia and the shortsighted people who have railed against them, only to be proven wrong. But what if you agree with that premise, and like Keen, you fear that Facebook will "Zuck up" the species, or at least take it sweetly in the hayloft then sell the videos to Zynga?

Then I think you would still have to conclude that he lacks perspective, because he simply doesn't go far enough. His main concern, which he backs up with the quacking noises words of Techdirt's good friend Sherry Turkle, is that social media is causing people to build their identities based on what people think of them rather than magically conjuring up an identity from within—and that this is a tragedy for humanity:

But this shift to a Facebook world of incessant "friending," Professor Turkle correctly warns us, is a "seductive fantasy" which is weakening us both as individuals and as a society. The problem, she explains, is that a "capacity for solitude is what nurtures great relationships." But in today's always-on social media world, our solitude has been replaced by incessant online updates, which both weaken our sense of self and our ability to create genuine friendships.

...

What it means, of course, is that we are creating a world in which our sense of identity, of who we actually are, is defined by what others think of us. Social media's ubiquity means that we are losing that most precious of human things -- our sense of self . Our devices are always on; our "Timeline" (Facebook's product which greedily attempts to capture our entire life narrative) is there for everyone to see; we are living in public on a radically transparent global network that, by 2020, will be fed by 50 billion intelligent devices carried by the majority of people on the planet.

This is disappointingly short-sighted. How could Keen reach this conclusion without noticing that the telephone also created more intercommunication and immediacy within communities, and thus should be rejected as well? Or that earlier still, international postage did us a great disservice by inundating our identities with annoying perspectives from around the world? If I am to follow someone backwards into this brave old world of isolation, I want a true leader who knows how to go big or go home (and "home" should be like, a cave, or something). In fact, I can't think of a single instant in the history of human civilization where members of a community have not largely defined their identity and value based on the standards and demands of that community. I'm beginning to suspect that farming may be to blame—or maybe cave painting? Frankly I'm not sure why we spend so much time coming up with words to express our thoughts and get feedback from others, violating the sanctity of our identities by tempering them with a variety of viewpoints, when all we really need are hunting commands. So why isn't Keen championing that cause?

Or maybe it's not history Keen is lacking—maybe it's philosophy. After all, there's a simple solution to his problem: solipsism. Wasn't it Descartes' first principle that the self is the only thing one can be sure exists? And someone who hates progress so much should never need more than one principle. If we just accept that nobody else is real, then it won't bother us when they tweet photos of their breakfast anymore. Ah, but I guess then we wouldn't get the other benefits Keen mentions:

But remember, the less we publicly announce about ourselves, the more mysterious and thus the more interesting our private selves become.

Wait, now I'm confused. I thought the whole idea was to be less narcissistic, and not base our identities on the opinions of others. That sure sounds like a high-school-level attempt to cultivate a public identity to me, but since I've now decided that neither Keen nor anyone reading this actually exists, I'll let it pass and focus on building my self-esteem by beating myself at Words With Friends, which is way more fun when you renounce your friends. Still, I expect more from figments of my imagination, and I hope Keen will realize that he's only scratched the surface of the vile threat to our humanity that "community" represents.

Filed Under: andrew keen, digital vertigo, luddite, progress, sherry turkle, social media
Companies: facebook

RIAA's Cary Sherman: We Really Just Want To Give Consumers What We, Er, They Want

from the help-us-help-you-help-us dept

Last week on his show Keen On, Andrew Keen wrapped up a series of music-industry-themed interviews (which included BitTorrent's Bram Cohen and Techdirt's new friend David Lowery) by talking to RIAA CEO Cary Sherman. The conversation is pretty tame, and Keen mostly just lets Sherman speak his piece, so I wanted to take a closer look at his answers and respond to some of his claims. This is not a complete transcript, but the first part of the interview is embedded below—in the next post I'll look at part two, in which Sherman answers some questions from Keen's viewers.

One thing is clear: Sherman has been following the public reaction to things like his diatribe in the New York Times, and he knows that everyone is sick of hearing him whine about infringement. He actually makes it through one-and-a-half semi-sincere answers before even using the word "piracy"—but after that it's virtually all he talks about. First, though, Keen simply asks him if he thinks the new ecosystem is better or worse for musicians. There are a lot of problems with his response:

It obviously depends on where you sit. For young, emerging artists they have more of an opportunity to get out in front of the public in ways that were never before imaginable. How much money they'll be able to make doing so is a serious question. Established artists are definitely doing worse than they used to be doing, and artists who are signed by labels are not getting the opportunities that they used to get when they were signed by a label: the marketing, the promotion, the exposure and of course sales.

So he apparently admits that the labels have failed at their job, and are now no longer even trying—and that artists will get more exposure going it alone since the labels provide no opportunities. I can't say I disagree. But the catch is the money, which he's sure isn't there:

So there are more income streams, but those income streams are much, much reduced. I think the Future of Music Coalition recently came out with a study showing that most artists are not benefiting substantially from these new revenue streams. And certainly if you look at the raw data from the industry, we're less than half the size that we were in 1999, we have way less than half the employment, fewer artists on the roster and so on and so forth.

Wait, does he mean the highly optimistic FMC study in which they concluded that "overall, digital technologies seem to be having a positive impact on musicians' earning capacity"? It's a shame Keen didn't push back on this point, because for Sherman to present that study as evidence that artists are worse off today is flagrantly dishonest. As for his "raw data", that says a lot about the failures of his corner of the industry (he's only talking about SoundScan sales and major label employment, glossing over the fact that the Big Six became the Big Three in that timespan) and very little about the overall situation for musicians. Next, Keen asks him why he thinks this is happening:

There are always a lot of factors involved in anything like that. There has obviously been a proliferation of new media and therefore competition from other media, but the fact is that more music is being consumed than ever before, just less and less of it is being paid for. I think we're now at a point where about 35% of music acquired is actually being paid for, so the rest is being taken for free.

I have no idea how Sherman arrived at that figure, but I'm a lot more than 35% sure it's bunk. I imagine the percentage of music that gets paid for is much, much lower—and always has been. With radio, television, music played in shops and in public spaces, free shows at bars, music played for friends, music played at parties, guitars strummed around a campfire and everything else in this music-saturated world, only a minuscule fraction of music consumed is actually paid for. Music is not, and never has been, a simple commodity. Sherman continues, paying lip service to all the market factors that have contributed to the decline in recorded music sales, and you can feel the tension building until he finally hits the p-word:

The fact is that piracy has had an enormous, really a devastating impact on the industry, because paying for music has become voluntary. It's a tip jar. If you don't want to pay for it you don't need to because you can always find online any of the music that you want. We're trying to come up with ways to offer the consumers the content that they want in ways that they want it, conveniently, reasonably priced, so that they will get it legitimately and compensate the creators. That is the number one anti-piracy strategy, which is basically offering consumers what they want.

That second part would be great, if the RIAA actually did any of that. Instead, time and time again we see them taking a sue-first, negotiate later strategy with new music services, and pushing legislation like SOPA/PIPA that puts a huge burden on innovators. Sherman then makes some comments about the businesses that profit from infringement, and Keen asks him to elaborate:

Megaupload is a great example. They were basically monetizing all the content that was stored in their lockers that they would distribute to people who would click on links all over the internet to get that content for free. Kim Dotcom was earning millions and the creators were earning nothing at all.

While it's possible, even likely, that Megaupload broke the law and some of the charges against them will stick, the assertion that creators were "earning nothing" is not quite true. Creators who embraced Megaupload were benefitting from it and were indeed earning money through its bounty payments for popular uploads. That's why we saw both well-established artists like Busta Rhymes and indie artists like Dan Bull take Megaupload's side after it was shut down.

Keen then asks if there are any legal businesses profiting by monetizing the content of artists, which elicits a bizarre answer from Sherman:

There's no question that all the companies that are providing access to music are benefiting in some way, legal companies, and that's entirely appropriate. ISPs have done very well by the availability of music online, because it has created greater demand for broadband access, and as a result they have now penetrated to the 66-67% level of US households, because they want access to the content that the entertainment industry offers. But that's perfectly fine.

Well, I suppose it's good to know that Sherman approves of broadband. As far as I know, the RIAA has never pushed the kind of "piracy tax" on ISPs that some organizations around the world have proposed. I guess they don't plan to start now. Of course, his answer also exposes the hubris of the legacy entertainment industry: he thinks their content is the only content anyone wants, and that they alone are responsible for broadband adoption.

Eventually Sherman can't stall any longer and starts to talk about enforcement, which, it quickly becomes clear, is all he really cares about. He actually defends their past strategy of suing file-sharers, saying that it was successful in spreading awareness and curtailing the growth of peer-to-peer networks, but then quickly reverses and says that since P2P is growing once again, it necessitated the five- six-strike plan they recently negotiated with ISPs (and the government). It's amusing to watch Sherman try to describe a consumer-punishment plan in a way that sounds "consumer-friendly":

So we did a deal with ISPs under which ISPs would send notices that we send to the ISP that a user on their network is infringing, they will send a copyright alert to the user and there will be educational materials associated with it, FAQs, all the information about how we got the information, whether they should check whether they have a wireless router that's unsecured, all that sort of stuff. And after awhile if they continue to persist in this behavior, over four and five and six notices, there might be some mitigation measures imposed like throttling bandwidth or something like that, up to the individual ISP. But the idea is to, in a very consumer friendly way, educate the public about what copyright is all about, the consequences of violating copyright, and the long term importance of preserving the content that people want.

Thankfully, Keen pushes back a bit on this point and notes that most people don't consider the RIAA to be very consumer-friendly at all, especially not after they tried to push SOPA on everyone. He asks Sherman if he thinks they can convince people otherwise. It's the last question, and I'll leave you with Sherman's answer in full, because it's a doozie. He immediately jumps to the unrelated topic of counterfeiting, incorrectly calls boots and batteries "copyrighted products", and then, having said absolutely nothing about how SOPA would help musicians, claims that's who we needed it for. For some reason, he chooses to end the interview with the random assertion that aspiring musicians are giving up and becoming lawyers (which is funny because the first person who comes to mind is Bill Patry—no friend of the RIAA's cause). With that in mind, enjoy:

For one thing, just because we don't want to get back into SOPA, but SOPA was not just about copyrighted music or movies, it was about counterfeit products too. It was designed to protect American consumers from counterfeit products like pharmaceuticals, which are actually being sold to American consumers from fraudulent websites on the internet. There are every kind of copyrighted product, from boots to Rosetta Stone language materials to things that could actually endanger your lives like batteries that could blow up and so on. So this really was designed to protect consumers against counterfeit websites that were operating from overseas and selling into the US market. Did we lose some consumer trust? Absolutely. What happened with SOPA has created a lot of skepticism on the part of the online community that were interested in consumer welfare, but it all depends on how you look at consumer welfare. We think that consumer welfare is not getting a product for free, but getting the best possible product you can. And if our artists make music that people want, it's a win-win for everyone, and we think that the long-term consumer interest is in creating an ecosystem in which there is compensation for creators so that they can be paid for their craft to go on making music. I don't know how many would-be musicians have gone to law school instead because they've seen that their opportunities in the music industry have been disappearing with every new illegal downloading technology. But it's our job to somehow create an ecosystem that makes consumers happy, makes creators happy and works for everybody.

Filed Under: andrew keen, cary sherman, copyright, music industry
Companies: riaa

Why The Internet Has Been Awesome For Both Musical Artists and Fans

from the cool-story-bro dept

One phenomenon we often write about on Techdirt is how the internet has completely killed the music industry and how it has turned our world into a culturally barren wasteland, deprived of art and even joy. More accurately, we write about people who say such things and point out the inaccuracies, ignorance or basic flaws in their logic.

Critically acclaimed pop culture critic Simon Reynolds was recently interviewed by Andrew Keen and made a bunch of generalizations and claims that are in seeming contrast with his progressive outlook previously shown in musings about punk and post-punk, as well as rave culture.

The interview starts off as you expect it would:

"It's much less likely that you'll be able to make a living doing it."

And how have you measured that 'likelihood'? Even if there are less people making a living from making or performing music, a claim for which I have yet to see good proof, is it really less likely that anyone will be able to make a living off of it?

Instead of backing up his claim, Reynolds continues and discusses the way things used to be in a romantic tone which doesn't change as he compares the old label-centric model to a "lottery", with artists usually having to get "in the red." Misplaced nostalgia. What a long way we have come from that - from a world where artists were at the mercy of corporations to a world of empowered artists in which they are at the mercy of their fans, their customers.

In fact, people have a much larger chance to make a living from music these days. This can be witnessed very clearly in electronic genres, where it is the norm for people to start as 'bedroom producers' and, if they're good enough, they'll get picked up by blogs, then labels and will then be able to build a proper studio and make a living from touring. If they're good enough, according to fans and curators within their niche - not according to label execs or music journalists. Anyone can become a producer and anyone that manages to find an audience and connects with them properly has the opportunity to start making a living from it. It's not easy, but at least it's not a lottery.

Next claim:

"A generation has come along who don't think they should pay for music."

Then explain Justin Bieber. Where does the demand for his merchandise come from? Who is attending his tour events? About 30% of all music recordings are still bought by people under 30, the generation that grew up with the internet. Even the RIAA's numbers show it. That does not take into account live shows or other ways of 'paying for music'. True, the same group used to be responsible for 45% of the purchases, but that still doesn't mean they don't believe in paying for music. Just because only 20% of teenagers will clean up their room out of their own free will, that doesn't mean an entire generation has come along who don't think they should clean. Then again, where would music be without people talking about new generations they do not understand.

Reynolds continues:

"I think there's something about paying for music that makes it more intense; you've got to listen harder to music. If you pay for it you're going to pay attention to the record you bought and get your money's worth."

Does music that depends on the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance really deserve to be bought? At the end of the day, music being available in a 'feels like free' manner, for instance via YouTube or Spotify, means that your music has to stand out. Either by being really good or by having a unique sound. Preferably both. Quality gets rewarded with attention and attention is what can be monetized down the line. No more lotteries.

Then follows a breakdown of mash-ups. Two lines really stand out:

"A mash-up is not something that you'd really want to listen to more than a few times because it's like a joke, isn't it, really?"

"And they're not adding anything. They're not adding--they're not a contribution to the future of music, I don't think."

Come on! That's what my parents said about house music when I first heard it as a kid. Those statements, especially the latter, sound like an echo of the criticisms early rave innovators like Shut Up And Dance and The KLF received from the previous generation that did not understand the new revolution in music.

Perhaps some explanation is needed. Part of the mash-up culture is indeed like an out of control meme - nerd humor at its finest, focused more on the joke than on the art. However that's definitely not what all mash-ups are. Take a look at this live mash-up by Madeon, which we covered a while back: Or look at Girl Talk. Or look at absolute classics like De La Soul's 3 Feet High And Rising album, which is basically composed of intricate mash-ups layered with raps. The same for the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique album, of which someone composed a great Spotify playlist with all the tracks that were sampled on the album by the way.

Many new, trendsetting genres, such as dubstep or moombahton, rely or have relied heavily on remixing, altering or mashing-up previous works. The outright dismissal of mash-ups as a contribution to the future of music is nothing new though. This dismissal was false when hiphop and house DJs started mashing up disco and funk records in the late 70s and early 80s, and it is false today. Mash-up culture is pop art on steroids.

After Keen notes that "you're not allowed to be on TechCrunch and be too miserable," they aim to end the interview on a cheerful note and start talking about radio (yes, really).

"Anything that can take on the role that radio used to have and deliver new things to people that they're gonna like. It's gonna prosper."

I think he's on to something there. Personally I have very high hopes for something called... the internet. It's common to see people looking for ways in which 'new technology X' can replace 'old technology Y', although that's never the people that grew up using the new technology. The internet's purpose was never to create a way to replace old technologies with some a single new alternative. What the internet has done is take all the different roles of radio such as curator, broadcaster, gatekeeper, commentator, critic, entertainer and more, and it has separated or perhaps eliminated some. Now anyone can take on one of those roles or any combination thereof. It's no longer something exclusive.

Hope you don't mind the sarcasm here and there, Simon. You've got a great mind, but I couldn't let these claims go by unchallenged. If you'd like to retort, please get in touch. We'd be glad to feature it on here.

Personally, I think this is an awesome time for both musical artists and fans right now. There is so much opportunity and freedom. I think it's a great time for music and perhaps it will take some more years and further disruption for some folks to finally be able to see that -- just like the general music industry's shifted opinion about that De La Soul album mentioned above, which was initially met with plenty of animosity from the traditional industry. Luckily, true pioneers ignore such animosity, move on and set the standards for tomorrow for both musical artists and fans.

Filed Under: andrew keen, culture, internet, mashups, radio, simon reynolds

A Look Back On Andrew Keen's Failed Predictions

from the oh-look-at-that... dept

In writing my recent post about the failure of Google's Knol, I went back to look at what I had written previously about it and I dug up a post from October of 2008, in which I discussed a series of predictions from Andrew Keen that struck me as particularly shortsighted and wrong. It was right after the latest economic crisis had shifted into overdrive and Keen had predicted that this economic change would lead to the end of "open source" and "free" business models because people would have to actually start making money. He also predicted that things like Facebook and Twitter would collapse in the economic realities of 2009:

The altruistic ideal of giving away one's labor for free appeared credible in the fat summer of the Web 2.0 boom when social-media startups hung from trees, Facebook was valued at $15 billion, and VCs queued up to fund revenue-less "businesses" like Twitter. But as we contemplate the world post-bailout, when economic reality once again bites, only Silicon Valley's wealthiest technologists can even consider the luxury of donating their labor to the latest fashionable, online, open-source project.

How's that prediction looking today? Right. (Update: For those who missed it, there's a sarcmark around that "Right")

In that article, he predicted the success of a bunch of websites and how they'd beat the "free" or "open" competitors. I picked out a series of those that I thought were particularly unlikely to happen and asked Andrew if he'd like to put some money behind his predictions -- with the bet being decided by who was right in October 2010 (I didn't choose all of Keen's predictions, because some of them were nonsensical and did not involve actual competitors). Here's what I wrote:

I'd like to make a bet. While there are different estimates as to how long any recession might be, the general consensus is that we should hopefully start pulling out by the end of 2009 or early 2010. So, let's pick a few of these that we can measure, and I'll bet Andrew Keen $100 (really money, Andrew) that in two years, on October 22, 2010, Wikipedia still gets more traffic than Knol, that Google is still much, much, much bigger than Mahalo (if they're even considered competitors any more), and that YouTube gets more traffic than Hulu.

If any one of those is untrue, I'll write him a check.

Tragically, when October 22, 2010 came around, I had forgotten about this original post. Also, Keen never responded to the bet, either because he was unaware of it or because he didn't really believe his own predictions. Either way, it looks like he made the right decision, whether on purpose or not, because every one of the predictions I made were correct compared to his predictions. Knol didn't beat Wikipedia. Mahalo did not beat Google. Hulu did not beat YouTube (though, Hulu is doing well for now).

I had never met Keen when I wrote that original article, though I have had some fun conversations with him in the past year, so I'm interested to see if he's willing to revisit his original predictions and to admit that perhaps he was wrong with his analysis of how "free" and "open source" would be knocked out by the economic crisis.

Filed Under: andrew keen, predictions
Companies: google, hulu, knol, mahalo, wikipedia, youtube

Reminder: Not Everyone Online Is A Jerk

from the nice-to-know dept

Following the incredibly tragic story of Abraham Biggs' live broadcasting his suicide, plenty of "web 2.0" critics such as Andrew Keen jumped on the chance to blast the "anomie, cruelty and narcissism that characterises much of the web." Of course, if you think social networks are evil, you're going to interpret events that way, but, of course, as has been pointed out before, communication tools don't discriminate over who can use them -- so of course there are some awful people who use them, just as there are many good people. Communication tools don't change that. And, for every tragic Abraham Biggs story out there, it seems likely that there are many, many stories like Ayelet Waldman, who talks about how her online community of friends saved her from committing suicide. Of course, those stories don't get nearly as much attention, so folks like Keen can pretend they don't exist and that social networking communication tools are mainly used for shallow, meaningless conversations.

Filed Under: abraham biggs, andrew keen, ayelet waldman, community, social networks, suicide

Andrew Keen Predicts The End Of Gardening And Pickup Basketball

from the if-it's-not-paid,-it's-not-worth-doing dept

So I already wrote about Andrew Keen's ridiculously laughable assertion that the economic downturn would spell the end of all unpaid activity online -- such as blogging, contributing to Wikipedia and developing open source software. The whole thing was so laughable, I asked Keen to put some money behind some of his predictions, though to date I have not heard from him. I'm guessing this means he really does not believe what he writes.

However, I have to bring this up again, because Jesse Walker over at Reason Magazine does such an amazing job demonstrating the basic logic fallacy in Keen's thinking that it's too good not to repeat:

Andrew Keen predicts an end to backyard gardens, playground basketball, basement jam sessions, amateur painting, and open mic nights for the duration of the economic hard times, because "the idea of free labor will suddenly become profoundly unpalatable to someone faced with their house being repossessed or their kids going hungry."

Oh, wait. Hold on. He only predicts an end to unpaid-but-pleasurable labor on the Internet

No one ever does anything that doesn't result in immediately getting paid, apparently.

Filed Under: amateurs, andrew keen, business models, financial crisis, free, open source

Andrew Keen: Put Some Money Behind Your Predictions?

from the who-actually-listens-to-this-guy dept

Andrew Keen, of course, is a guy who has written a laughably bad book about how only experts like himself should be able write things, because all those "amateurs" get stuff wrong. There are some who believe that Keen's entire personality is satire, because everything he accuses "amateurs" of doing, he does himself. He gets many facts wrong in his book. His writing is amateurish at best. His interpretations are laughable. He relies on incredibly weak reasoning -- all of which are things he insists that amteurs do, but pros such as himself don't do, because they have editors and such. The most amusing, of course, may be his condemnation of Larry Lessig, whose position he gets almost 100% factually incorrect.

So far, I have yet to read anything by Keen that isn't easily torn apart as laughably false, which reinforces the idea that everything he writes is satire. His latest piece, pointed out by Slashdot, is no exception. In it, Keen announces that the current financial crisis will put an end to open source and "free" business models because the crisis will mean that people actually have to make money.

Spot the rather obvious logical fallacy? The one even your sixth grader could point out? Right. Keen has set up a totally bogus strawman, that "open source" and "free" mean you don't make any money. As anyone who actually looks at the details knows, that's simply not true. Keen is so blinded by the word "free" he misses the fact that when people discuss the use of "free" as a part of a business model, they're talking about using it to make money. Instead, he seems to assume that "free" is the end of the discussion.

"One of the very few positive consequences of the current financial miasma will be a sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor. Mass unemployment and a deep economic recession comprise the most effective antidote to the utopian ideals of open-source radicals."

Funny, but part of the reason why all of those "user generated content" businesses took off in the first place was that after the dot com bubble burst, people had a lot of spare time on their hands. So they were more willing to contribute and take part in these things. Keen also seems to not realize that much of that user generated work and open source efforts are not about "utopian ideals" but very practical reasons that involve non-monetary benefits. People contribute to open source software not because they're idealistic, but because it helps them elsewhere. People blog and post videos on YouTube not because they're idealistic, but because they get value out of doing so.

The altruistic ideal of giving away one's labor for free appeared credible in the fat summer of the Web 2.0 boom when social-media startups hung from trees, Facebook was valued at $15 billion, and VCs queued up to fund revenue-less "businesses" like Twitter. But as we contemplate the world post-bailout, when economic reality once again bites, only Silicon Valley's wealthiest technologists can even consider the luxury of donating their labor to the latest fashionable, online, open-source project.

You know, I remember another business that had absolutely no business model right after the last bubble burst, even though venture capitalists had dumped $25 million into it at a very high valuation (which many -- including myself -- thought was ridiculous). That company became Google. According to Keen, that couldn't have happened, because who would ever invest in a company with no business model? Does Keen have no sense of history?

"I'm pretty sure, if not certain, that the idea of free labor will suddenly become profoundly unpalatable to someone faced with their house being repossessed or their kids going hungry. Being paid to work is intuitive to the human condition; it represents our most elemental sense of justice."

Again, that's not what happened during the last downturn, but why let facts get in the way? Also, this is still based on the false premise that there's no actual benefit for people and that they're only doing things for "utopian" ideals. That's simply untrue. If contributing to an open source project helps get you a well-paying job, is that utopian? If building an open source tool helps you jump start a different business, is that utopian? If blogging, Twittering or posting videos to YouTube helps you communicate cheaper, faster and better than other tools, is that utopian? Hardly. But Keen seems unable to consider these possibilities.

"So how will today's brutal economic climate change the Web 2.0 "free" economy? It will result in the rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash.

Well, I certainly hope so, since we hand out plenty of cash to contributors at The Insight Community, but I still think Keen is wrong here. He again is dismissing or purposely ignoring the non-monetary value that people get. Let's look at his "winners" list:

"It will mean the success of Knol over Wikipedia, Mahalo over Google, TheAtlantic.com over the HuffingtonPost.com, iTunes over MySpace, Hulu over YouTube Inc. , Playboy.com over Voyeurweb.com, TechCrunch over the blogosphere, CNN's professional journalism over CNN's iReporter citizen-journalism.

Well, first off, some of those aren't actually competitors, so it seems rather unfair to suggest that's the case. However, I'd like to make a bet. While there are different estimates as to how long any recession might be, the general consensus is that we should hopefully start pulling out by the end of 2009 or early 2010. So, let's pick a few of these that we can measure, and I'll bet Andrew Keen $100 (really money, Andrew) that in two years, on October 22, 2010, Wikipedia still gets more traffic than Knol, that Google is still much, much, much bigger than Mahalo (if they're even considered competitors any more), and that YouTube gets more traffic than Hulu.

If any one of those is untrue, I'll write him a check. As for the other comparisons he makes, they don't seem to be particularly reasonable comparisons, so I don't see how to fairly evaluate how one wins over the other. TechCrunch is a part of the blogosphere, so how does that make sense? In fact, TechCrunch came out of the same "utopian" ideals that Keen dismisses. Michael Arrington started it for fun, with no plans to turn it into a business, but that's what it became. I thought Keen thought that wasn't possible? iReporter doesn't compete with CNN's professional news staff -- they work together. iTunes doesn't compete with MySpace -- they're in totally different businesses.

So, let's put some real money on this, Andrew. Or does Andrew Keen not really believe what he writes?

Filed Under: amateurs, andrew keen, business models, financial crisis, free, open source

Rewriting Copyright History, The Elitist Way: Compare File Sharers To 9/11 Terrorists

from the stunning dept

When we first debunked Hank Williams' problematic attack on Mike Arrington for suggesting, reasonably, that copyright law had reached the point that it needed a serious rethink, someone told me that Hank Williams is trying to become "the next Andrew Keen." Keen, of course, wrote a book last year about how the internet is somehow destroying culture, with the basic thesis being that "culture" is defined only as professionally produced content. Effectively, his argument was that non-professionally produced content simply can't be good, so by competing with professionally produced content, all that amateur content was somehow damaging professional content. The logical errors in this thesis are pretty easy to spot, but we'll just mention the obvious one: if professional content is so much better than amateur content, what does it have to fear from amateur content? In fact, Keen's whole thesis is so ridiculous, and the book praising the reliability and accuracy of "professional" media is so riddled with errors, distorted truths and outright falsehoods, that some have suggested (credibly) that Keen is merely satire. Everything that Keen claims is bad about amateur media, he does -- repeatedly.

Either way, it appears that he's a bit jealous of Hank Williams taking up his role in these debates, as he's finally chimed in on Arrington's original piece, just a few weeks late. Keen's take is so filled with errors that it definitely seems to support the "satire" theory -- and for now we're going to go with that theory, and assume it's the case. But, for a few howlers in the piece, try these on for size:

"Arrington's stance, of course, epitomizes the permissive attitude about intellectual property that has already destroyed the music business and is now threatening to kill the holy trinity that includes Hollywood, the television industry, and the book trade."

This would be the music industry that is seeing every single aspect of its business on the upswing (other than the sale of plastic discs)? This would be Hollywood that had its best year ever in 2007? Ah, right. Destroyed, huh? This is "professional" content at work.

In 1999, when Napster first assaulted the recorded music industry with its peer-to-peer technology, we heard similarly open-minded nonsense from Web 1.0 moguls like MP3.com founder Michael Robertson and Public Enemy's Chuck D. Almost 10 years later, the catastrophic consequences of Napster's mass piracy are all too tragically evident. In 1997, global recorded music sales were $45 billion. By next year, it is estimated that they will have fallen to around $23 billion -- an almost 50 percent drop in sales in a little more than a single decade.

This is classic Keen. Total misdirection in how you define the market and selective quoting of facts. You see, markets for obsolete products shrink, but the overall market is not shrinking. It's like the analyst reports that whined about the market for "PDAs" shrinking just as smartphones were taking over. Did we say that smartphones destroyed the market for PDAs or did we just recognize that the market evolved? Keen leaves out the fact that concert revenue is at record highs. He leaves out the fact that more people today are making music than ever before in history, and more people are able to listen to more music than ever before in history. By any real measure, it would appear the music industry is thriving, even if the obsolete part (selling recordings) is fading.

And, then, there's Keen's coup de grace, comparing those who want to listen to music to the 9/11 terrorists in a sentence riddled with errors:

"The truth, of course, is that the theft of digital content is no more "natural" than holding up little old ladies on street-corners or crashing civilian airliners into tall buildings. And it's the responsibility of thought-leaders like Arrington to use their privileged positions to educate the innocent about the evils of digital thievery."

• Error 1: Calling infringement "theft."
• Error 2: Saying that it's irresponsible for someone who notices that the majority of the population is breaking a law to suggest that perhaps it's time to rethink that law.
• Error 3: Suggesting actions done by the majority of the population is the equivalent of the 9/11 hijackers.
• Error 4: Saying that any "thought-leader" has a "responsibility" to take a particular stand
• Error 5: Saying that infringement is a problem of "innocents" run wild.
• Error 6: Putting a moral angle ("evil") on an issue that is merely one of business models

So many errors in just such a short quote. You'd never see that from a professional writer... oh wait.

We'll finish it off one more howler:

By stating his opposition to criminalizing "natural behavior," Arrington is not only legitimizing online theft, but he is also undermining the credibility of entertainment companies, such as Hulu or Blinkbox that have invested major resources into building entirely legal Web businesses. Defending YouTube's flagrant disregard for intellectual property laws is tantamount to justifying criminal behavior....

Ah, you see, in Keen's satirical world, companies like Hulu and Blinkbox that offer up professionally produced content deserve to have their business models protected by the government and criminal laws. But those that support amateur content are criminal enterprises. The fact that Keen seems unable to grasp the difference between a service provider and a user in terms of criminal liability is the least of the problems here. The fact that Keen seems unable to grasp the fact that these are merely different business models for distributing content -- and the one he dislikes is winning in the market -- suggests an unwillingness to actually understand what's happening here.

What it comes down to is that folks like Keen and Williams have decided that there's a certain class of content that "counts," and that's "professional" content. All other content is a problem -- especially if it interferes with an obsolete business model. Basically, they've decided that they like one particular (poor and increasingly obsolete) business model for a particular group of companies, and decided that interference with that business model must be a crime -- even if the end result is exactly the opposite of what they predict (i.e., there's more content being produced today than ever before -- it's just that it's happening using a very different model than the one they like). Luckily, we live in a world where business models adapt and change, and the companies and pundits unwilling to do so will simply fade away.

Filed Under: amateurs, andrew keen, copyright, copyright reform, elitism